


Wisdom

by Katalyna_Rose



Series: Vhenan and Associated Stories (Lyna Lavellan) [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Codex Entries (Dragon Age), In the Fade, Pre-Canon, The Fade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-06 04:26:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13403427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katalyna_Rose/pseuds/Katalyna_Rose
Summary: “And after the destruction of Arlathan, when the gods could no longer hear our prayers, it is said that Fen'Harel spent centuries in a far corner of the earth, giggling madly and hugging himself in glee.”- Codex entry: Fen’Harel: The Dread WolfIn which Pride meets Wisdom and reclaims a part of himself he'd lost.





	Wisdom

The air was cold and wrong, everything that had once been the world cut off from him. He was disembodied, a spirit once more but not, his tether still existed somewhere on the other side of his greatest mistake. He wandered far corners of a place more infinite than the world he knew, larger than was imaginable, seeking a way back to himself. There was nothing, only the vast emptiness.

Hatred grew within his gut, for himself and for his deeds and for those who drove him to such lengths and such risks. He'd known there would be consequences, but he hadn't truly been prepared. Such was his lot, wasn't it? For all his planning, he was forever unprepared.

Whispers reached him in the dark corners he searched, his name slandered and hated, the good he tried to do erased. Traitor, the Great Betrayer, Trickster full of evil, he was their enemy, a cautionary tale told to their children. He was hated and spat on, his memory twisted into malice.

He broke.

He curled into himself and screamed his regret, his agony, his rage. Hands on his head, pressing into the pain as though it would somehow help him stay whole. He rocked himself for comfort that wouldn't come, sobbing until a pond and then a lake and then an ocean formed around him. He sat in the middle of the ocean of his pain and sobbed, voice wrecked and body shuddering, arms wrapped around himself. Faces flashed before his eyes, people he'd known, people he'd betrayed, people who had died for his cause, ultimately in vain. And _her_ , All-Mother, Justice, for whom he had committed his greatest crime, her body turned to dust, he couldn't save her. He couldn't avenge her. He had instead destroyed all they had hoped to save.

He lost track of the years he stayed like that, his ocean growing around him in that once-dark and hidden corner of an infinite world. Sometimes spirits would wander close, wanting to help or feed off his pain, but he drove them all away with a snarl. Sometimes dreamers came to call on him, wondering who was making such a racket where there should be nothing, but he shifted to his wolf form and drove them away, too. Centuries, perhaps longer, he stayed on an island of pain in an ocean of grief and only added more depth.

Until a spirit unlike the others came by to see him. He tried to drive it away but it would not go. He snarled and snapped and shifted to his wolf, but still the spirit did not frighten and drew ever closer. He wanted to be alone with his pain but the spirit would not leave, though it had said nothing, tried to take nothing. Eventually he gave up trying to scare it away and allowed it to remain with him as he fell back into the grips of his agony. He forgot, sometimes, that he was no longer alone as he sobbed and raged at himself, but the spirit remained.

He didn't know how long it had been with him in silence before it finally spoke. Its words were in Elvhen, its form resembled that of an elven woman though it was blurred at the edges and translucent green. "How far Pride has fallen now," it whispered on a breath. "I would have thought one who was once our own would not fall so easily."

He snarled at the spirit and lashed out with claws and magic, but it merely moved itself beyond his range before settling at his side again. "Do not speak to me of pride, Old One! My pride has long since abandoned me."

The spirit looked at him soberly. "Only because you drove it off has your Pride been lost," it told him softly. "But there is Wisdom to be found in Pain and Failure. There is another part of yourself that could be reclaimed from this."

He stilled for a moment, his sobs easing, then shook his head. His instincts told him to listen to the spirit but he was too broken for that. "The part of me you speak of has been lost since I took a form," he informed it raggedly.

"Perhaps," the spirit demurred. "Yet perhaps you simply need a guiding hand to find it again. As you say, you took a form, so you are no longer bound by our rules. You may choose to change, where we are static."

He laughed, and it was maniacal, hysterical, an echo of his ruined soul. "What change could be found in this place I have destroyed?"

"How do you know it is destroyed?" the spirit asked gently, tilting its head in curiosity. "Have you walked the old paths and found the new ones? Have you seen what is left and what is rebuilt? No, you have sat here in self-pity and wasted away the centuries."

He snarled again, not wanting to face how pathetic he had become. "There is nothing left for me!"

"How do you know?" the spirit asked again. It stood and brushed off its knees as though it had been sitting in sand, though there was no debris. "When you are finished, you will find me in the library at A ** dahl'Melana. Do not touch my books, if you please, there is order in my chaos." And with that, the spirit vanished. **

** He scrubbed his face and looked out at the vast ocean he had created. Though it rankled, the spirit was right, he knew nothing of what now lay beyond those shores. Perhaps it was time he found out and wandered the paths of the Fade. Did he not have a duty to whatever remained to attempt to help in whatever way he could? He needed to learn what was left and how to return to his body. **

** Though his heart remained heavy, he left his ocean of sorrows to wander the Fade. Instead of frightening away the spirits he encountered, he greeted them and spoke with them and learned from them. He did not adorn himself in the glittering jewels and expensive fabrics that he had once worn, but instead appeared as a humble traveler, wandering and curious. The dreamers he encountered were often wary of him all the same because he was different from the spirits, and sometimes they would realize who he was and grow frightened, vanishing from the Fade as they woke. It saddened him to see this taste of what he had become to the people left behind, but he did not know what he could do about it. **

** He learned what remained of his people and the spirits, how different yet similar the Fade appeared. He wandered for many years before seeking out that library and the spirit who promised to be within. The library was full of wisps flitting about between the shelves, careful never to knock over any books. The books themselves were stacked on shelves, on the floor, on any available surface. Sometimes the piles leaned precariously and sometimes they were meticulously straight, and he could see no order to the chaos that the spirit had claimed was there. Still, he did not disturb the books as he wandered further in, searching for the spirit. **

** "And now you know," the spirit said, appearing to him in a small alcove strewn with cushions on the flagstone floor and benches stacked with even more books, no room to sit there. "What have you reclaimed, Wanderer?" **

** Solas gazed at the gently smiling spirit, at the strange array of books, only some of which resonated with attached memories, at his own humble appearance. He considered his answer, but there was only one he could give. He hadn't found much, yet it was perhaps the most profound thing he had ever discovered. "Wisdom," he told the spirit, and it nodded its approval. **

 

**Author's Note:**

> I like this codex entry and this part of it specifically. There are so many things that can be inferred from it!


End file.
